Arab Apathy Raises Concerns About Israeli Democracy

In Umm Al-Fahm, a woman watched Monday as a police officer stood guard during a visit to the area by a member of Parliament.

Ammar Awad / Reuters

By JODI RUDOREN

January 16, 2013

BAKA AL-GHARBIYA, Israel — There are two distinct strains of voter apathy here in what is known as the Triangle, home to many of Israel’s 1.5 million Arab citizens.

The first is familiar to citizens in many democracies. “No one deserves my vote,” was how Fayez Najmi, who sells fresh fish from a sidewalk in this town of 20,000, put it. “We don’t see any progress or any achievement. We only see the politicians during campaigns.”

The second is more particular to this community. Nidal Jazmawi, who runs a dry cleaners in nearby Umm Al-Fahm and who has lived his entire life in Israel, said he was abstaining because as part of the Palestinian minority he feels his citizenship is meaningless. “This is not my country,” he said. “I don’t receive my rights in this state.”

With Israel heading to the polls on Tuesday, the two intensifying sources of apathy are raising new concerns here over the health of Israeli democracy. Experts say a social media campaign to boycott the election and a growing frustration with Arab lawmakers’ focus on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, rather than local concerns like crime, poverty and unemployment, threaten to depress Arab turnout below 50 percent.

That has raised alarm among Arabs and Jews concerned that a long-marginalized minority is increasingly alienated by Israel’s right-wing government and by the general tone of the campaign, particularly in the face of international criticism that its treatment of Palestinians within and beyond its borders is discriminatory and undemocratic.

Israeli newspapers have been calling on Arabs to vote. Supporters of the Arab-led party the National Democratic Assembly attended a campaign rally in December in the town of Nazareth.

Ammar Awad / Reuters

Several Israeli newspapers have run opinion pieces this week calling on Arabs to vote, with the liberal Haaretz newspaper taking the unusual step of printing an editorial also in Arabic. “Parliamentary elections are the heart of any civic struggle,” it read. “Despair and abstention are the worst enemies of such a struggle, and they are luxuries that Israel’s citizens cannot afford.”

Ahmad Tibi, a member of Parliament since 1999, said his United Arab List had joined with its two rivals, Hadash and Balad, in Facebook campaigns and election day efforts aimed at persuading voters to go to the polls, noting that in Israel’s coalition system, staying home bolsters the largest faction, in this case Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conservative Likud Beiteinu.

“In South Africa, people were killed struggling to have one person, one vote,” Mr. Tibi said in an interview on Wednesday. “In Israel, there is discrimination in every part of life — education, infrastructure, employment. In only one thing there is equal rights: the day of the election. One person, one vote, Jews and Arabs. Those who are not participating are shooting their own legs.”

While Arab-Israeli participation in national elections has been declining for decades, voters and experts alike said the situation had sharpened this year, citing as causes Israel’s political march to the right; the rising view that its conflict with the Palestinians is insoluble; an increase in laws perceived as discriminatory against Arab citizens; and the lack of unity among Arab parties.

“There’s a lot of issues of trust in the system, and that drives people away from the polls.” said Guy Ben-Porat, a professor of public policy at Ben-Gurion University who studies the Arab community in Israel.

Ahmad Tibi, an Arab-Israeli politician, campaigned Sunday in the town of Tira ahead of next Tuesday’s general election.

Ammar Awad / Reuters

Capitalizing on these concerns, a group of young activists created a boycott initiative that has gained some traction on Facebook, with an anti-voting rally scheduled for Saturday. “Voting would be a wrong way to deal with our ambitions,” said one of the organizers, George Ghantous. “Under Israel we won’t be able to get our ambitions.”

There have been Arab parties in Parliament since Israel’s founding, but none have ever been part of a governing coalition (though some Palestinians elected from so-called Zionist parties have). Today, Arabs make up 20 percent of Israel’s population of nearly 8 million, and 11 of Parliament’s 120 members represent the three Arab-dominated parties — one religious, one Communist and one nationalist. A new party, Hope for Change, has joined this year’s campaign promising to focus only on domestic issues and to join the government regardless of who leads it.

While more than three-quarters of Arab citizens voted in the 2008 municipal elections, turnout for national elections has been spiraling downward for decades, to 53 percent in 2009 (when 66 percent of Israeli Jews cast ballots). A November survey by As’ad Ghanem, a political scientist at the University of Haifa, found it would fall to 51 percent this time, and others predict it will plunge even lower.

If Arabs voted at the same rate as Jews, they could win more than 20 seats and be the second-largest bloc in Parliament. “It’s in our hands,” said Ghaleb Majadleh, a Parliament member and former minister from the Labor Party whose headquarters is here in Baka al-Gharbiya. Increase turnout by half, he said, and “Netanyahu would not be in the government.”

Israeli leaders often cite the presence of Arab citizens and their right to vote as evidence of the state’s commitment to democracy and equality. But many of the Arab lawmakers reject Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state.

The Shas party leader, Aryeh Deri, greeted members of the Druze community at a rally in Abu Snan in early January.

Ammar Awad / Reuters

Arab lawmakers and their constituents complain that their communities suffer from scarce jobs, crowded classrooms and a lack of municipal services. “You drove here: did you see the roads? Have you ever seen a city of 50,000 with no industrial zone?” Afou Eghbariyeh, a Hadash lawmaker, asked foreign journalists in Umm al Fahm. “No Ministry of Interior, no Ministry of Transportation; we have no representatives of the government here.”

In Professor Ghanem’s survey, 31 percent of those who did not plan to vote said it was because they had no one to vote for, 26 percent said they were not interested in politics and 8 percent each said it was a matter of conscience or their votes did not count. A majority of nonvoters said they would cast ballots if the Arab parties united in a single list. Ibrahim Sarsur, the leader of the United Arab List, said he had tried to join with his rivals for the campaign but decided “they are not mature enough.”

All three parties have blanketed towns like this one with election banners shouting their slogans: “The situation needs unity.” “We need to live in dignity.” “The whole truth.”

The message is getting through to some. “The more Arabs vote, the more seats we get — this is important,” said Aseel Fadoos, 27, a carpenter who stopped at a supermarket here on Tuesday afternoon and plans to vote Balad. A young woman at a children’s clothing shop up the street said she was supporting United Arab List because “if I don’t vote, the missing voice, maybe it will go to the extremist parties.”

Said Eghbariyeh, 60, who was sitting on a plastic chair outside a store in Umm Al Fahm smoking and sipping coffee, said he had always voted for Arab parties, but this time would support Meretz, a left-wing faction that pushes peace with the Palestinians. “The Arabs are only numbers, they have no influence,” he explained.

Nadim Nashef, the director of Baladna, a Haifa-based youth organization, said his friends had been fiercely debating whether to vote this time, with the boycott campaign “clearly a louder and stronger voice than before.”

He was torn. “Israel is using the Arab parties and the Arab citizens voting to say it’s a democracy; it’s not,” he said. “But then we need some kind of voice for our community, some people to speak out against racist rules and racist legislation, and that’s the main reason I’m voting.”